Apple Can Delete Purchased Movies From Your Library Without Telling You (theoutline.com)

Casey Johnston, writing for The Outline: When you buy a movie on iTunes, it's yours forever, until such a time as when Apple maybe loses the rights to distribute it, and then it will disappear from your library without a trace. This is what happened to Anders G. da Silva, who goes by @drandersgs on Twitter, and who tweeted about losing three movies bought on the iTunes Store.

When da Silva wrote to Apple to complain about the missing movies, Apple wrote back to him that "the content provider has removed these movies from the Canadian Store. Hence, these movies are not available in the Canada iTunes Store at this time." For his trouble in notifying Apple that it had disappeared three of his ostensible belongings for incredibly dubious legal reasons, Apple offered da Silva not even a refund, but two credits for renting a movie on the iTunes Store "priced up to $5.99 USD." After he argued that he was not in the market for rentals and would just like the movies he purchased, please, Apple tried to appease him with two more rental credits.

Comments

Never Buy Apple

[rea1l1]

Never buy Apple unless you are okay with being a slave to their dictatorial policies. Please support Linux.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[Jason1729]

Never "buy" content from any of these online streaming services. It's all rented and always has been. And not just Apple.

This is the "victim's" fault for not understanding what he was doing, this was obvious from day one. But people argue how much better and easier it is than old fashioned discs. And they will continue to "buy" into these pay per view streaming services.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[JaredOfEuropa]

I don’t mind pay per view or all-you-can-eat services like Spotify, because you are getting exactly what you are paying for: one view (or multiple views in a very short timeframe) of a particular movie, or access to whatever is on offer with the streaming service. If you don’t like their collection anymore, cancel your subscription at the end of the month.

If however you aim to build a library, physical discs or download-to-own content unencumbered by DRM are the only way to go. Everything else is just paying full price for rentals.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[drinkypoo]

This is the "victim's" fault for not understanding what he was doing, this was obvious from day one.

Not at all. This is unequivocally Apple's fault for describing it as a "purchase" instead of as a "rental". If Apple didn't secure a license to the content for effectively "forever" (such as a 99-year license) before "selling" the content to the user, then they made the sale in poor faith. Their activity was in fact fraud.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[MtHuurne]

Their store calls it "buy" and the price is set at a level far above the rent price: everything suggests you can buy movies. Don't blame the victim for not reading the fine print on what seems like a very ordinary consumer purchase.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[drinkypoo]

I expect that if you read the terms of service (you do read that, before you click "OK"buying anything, you are renting it, anybody who doesn't understand that needs a keeper.

Most people can't understand the ToS. They are deliberately written to be difficult to understand, and contain unnecessary verbiage to discourage people from digging into them to begin with. That's part of why we have laws governing contracts. Further, pretending that the meanings of words doesn't matter is bollocks. Apple deliberately confused customers, and the ToS doesn't change that.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[Anubis IV]

I completely agree, but I also think this summary is being a bit unfair. Apple didn't reach into his hard drive to delete his local copies. They simply pulled the listing from their store, meaning that new downloads and streaming are no longer possible.

It's the same practice they've had across all their services for years. When a developer pulls an app from the app store, the app's users get to keep their local copies, can transfer them to new devices, and can otherwise use them without issue. Same thing for films. My wife had a dozen films she had purchased in iTunes before we got married, and they all still work fine (though these days I have her buying DRM-free so that we can get them into Plex more easily). I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Apple lost the rights to distribute some of her films, but we'd likely never know.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[Lonewolf666]

That's why some countries have legislation against that sort of semi-hidden clauses. Germany for instance.
Besides, if the word "Sale" is displayed prominently and Apple's option to "retract" the content is only somewhere in the small print, the two directly contradict each other. So in court, the judge would have to decide which takes precedence. Common sense might say the "sale" that was written in big letters in the ad.

Re:Never Buy Apple

[Anubis IV]

Actually not true.

Actually, it is. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

While it's true that the kill switch exists, it isn't what happens when Apple loses the license to content or a developer pulls their app under normal conditions, nor is it related in any way to what happened here or what we're talking about. The only times I'm aware of the kill switch being used are for malware apps, and even then, Apple has only ever used it sparingly.

Just to highlight how loathe Apple is to use the kill switch, I once purchased an app that—if the user entered a particular sequence of buttons—turned the phone into a WiFi hotspot without the need for any jailbreaking. This was back in the time when carriers didn't allow iPhones to be used that way. Apple yanked the app from the store within a few hours of the sequence going viral, but you know what they didn't do? Delete it from my devices or prevent me from using it in any way. I used that app for years, and then it went with me to the next phone, and the one after that, until it finally stopped working years and years later after an OS update dropped compatibility for apps that hadn't been updated.

So yes, while they can kill apps (to which I never suggested otherwise), they didn't do that here, so let's stay on topic.

Re: Never Buy Apple

[saloomy]

This is kind of a half-true story though. The movies are yours when you buy them from Apple, and you can download them and have them forever. They will not delete from your devices. What Apple also gives you is the ability to redownload them onto other devices and at a later time, but it has to retain the right to do so. When the movie companies change their contracts on Apple, this is what happens.

I doubt Apple wanted to lose the rights to redistribute purchased content for reasons exactly like this story, they get painted as the bad guy. This was just poor negotiations for perpetual purchases and the guy lost out since he didn't maintain his purchased copy.

What I do fault Apple for is not notifying the gentleman that his movie would be gone from online distribution a week prior to its removal so he could facilitate getting a copy offline for himself. That's what sucks about this, and is a place I think Apple could improve its process pretty easily with a simple push notification

Yep

[AlanBDee]

This is why I buy the Blu-ray and rip it to my NAS; at least on shows I want to still have access to in 20 years. (Yes, I still have VHS tapes and a VCR)

Re:You didn't purchase movies

[olsmeister]

OK. I'll pray they don't alter the deal further.

Which is why...

[genfail]

...movies are always free on The Pirate Bay.

No "digital"

[bkr1_2k]

This is why we don't buy anything as a download. Physical media only. I'll take the time to rip it myself. If you want to own it, you have to have something physical to maintain control of it.

This is why we need consumer protection

[nine-times]

This is why we need stronger consumer protection. This isn't a weird, difficult, complex issue. In my mind, there's a very simple solution to this:

Make it illegal for digital media stores to remove access to anything that has been purchased. If, for some reason, they're unable to continue hosting it for streaming, they should be legally required to provide you with a DRM-free download.

Or else, they should be barred from using words like "buy" or "purchase". They can offer "long term rentals" with clear and explicit wording that access may be revoked at any time. Those disclaimers should not be buried in a EULA or terms of service. It should be legally required to be displayed obviously each time the long-term rental is offered.

You could debate some of the details, but the basic gist should be clear: Either provide people with what they "bought", or make it clear that they're not buying it.

Re:This is why we need consumer protection

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

This is why we need stronger consumer protection. This isn't a weird, difficult, complex issue. In my mind, there's a very simple solution to this:

Make it illegal for digital media stores to remove access to anything that has been purchased. If, for some reason, they're unable to continue hosting it for streaming, they should be legally required to provide you with a DRM-free download.

Your post makes some fine points, but let's all remember this happened in Canada. Had it happened in the USA, there may be a legal precedent basically in favor of what you proposed. The actor Bruce Willis got into a case where he wanted to leave his legally purchased song downloads to his children in his will and he had to go to court for the right to do that. He won. The providers of his downloads basically argued that Willis had entered into what was, in effect, a rental agreement for the songs, and as such no rights were transferable upon his death. He won and established the idea that he actually paid for the songs, he owned his copies, and as such they were his property to give away to his heirs in his will if he wished.

It's Not About Buying vs Leasing

[Blue Stone]

In this case, however, she bought the movies and then deleted them from her system. She was relying on Apple's service to be able to re-download them again.

These are two seperate things.

If she had kept her local copies, Apple would not have removed these items from her computer; they were, however, unable to re-supply her with copies of the movies she'd bought via their service because thye'd lost the licensing rights to distribute said movies.

Imagine a store that you buy a DVD from that also allows you to stream a copy of the same DVD from their servers. If you lose the DVD, or destroy it, you can stream the movie until they lose licensing rights. If you don't lose or destroy the DVD, you don't have to rely on this third party.

The person in the story 'destroyed their DVD' and then their streaming provider lost their distribution rights.

She relied on a third party backup. She thought this was a guaranteed service. She was wrong.

None of this, however, has anything to do with buying vs leasing/licensing/renting and companies telling you you bought something when you merely licensed or rented it (although this remains an issue in digital consumer law in any number of countries). If she'd kept her downloaded copy, she'd still have it.

Re:Why buy?

[jwhyche]

Spoken like someone that doesn't have kids. How many times I've heard that damn crab crone "kiss the girl.?" Thank god I drew the line at a teletubby disk collection.